


Of Bounties and Born Liars

by SaintLilin



Category: Red Dead Redemption (Video Games)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Bounty Hunters, Angry Sex, Arthur Feeling Things, Banter, Choking, Dirty Talk, Enemies to Lovers, F/M, Hate Sex, POV Arthur Morgan, Porn With Plot, Porn comes in 2nd chapter, Possessive Sex, Protective Arthur Morgan, Rival Sex, Rough Sex, Threat of Non Con: see authors note, enemies who fuck more like, you know the vibe
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-17
Updated: 2021-03-16
Packaged: 2021-03-25 16:14:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,458
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30091734
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SaintLilin/pseuds/SaintLilin
Summary: “Worried some big bad man is gonna steal me away, Morgan?” she mocks, and it’s so close to being the final straw that Arthur feels that thin rope of self control begin to splinter in his chest. His hand dwarfs her throat, squeezing just enough to hear her breath hitch.“Sweetheart,” Arthur snarls against her sweet mouth. “I am a big bad man.”
Relationships: Arthur Morgan/Original Female Character(s), Arthur Morgan/Reader
Comments: 5
Kudos: 35





	Of Bounties and Born Liars

**Author's Note:**

> hello my favorite dead fandom, i'm back with more smut B^)  
> I wanna start out with the fact that reader does have a name which with the Word Replacer extension you can change to whatever you prefer, I simply refuse to use Y / N because i'm a piece of shit and think it breaks up the story :^) 
> 
> Your key is 'Francis Hellsmith'. other than that, reader is not described besides a few scars! 
> 
> Also, mild warning in the second chapter for possible non con trigger: Arthur threatens not to pull out against what Reader tells him. He does, but if thats an ick for you it's better to know now.
> 
> Think that's it! Enjoy

Thieves’ Landing is as seedy and sordid as the name suggests. 

Arthur’s ride through the muddy settlement is punctuated by glares from loitering dock workers and propositions from working women, each more daring than the last until he’s pushing a cold, thin hand away from his belt on the steps of the saloon. Arthur mutters out an apology to soften to the decline, but the woman he’s rejected retreats eagerly back to her post by the door. 

Fortunately for them both, it’s not the stiff mouth of a woman he’s after, but the loose-lipped ramblings of a paid informant. 

Dealing with a middle man was never something he was proud of, not the way some bounty hunters were. It left a slime on his already oily conscience, buying information that may or may not be reliable from someone no better than the men he hunted. Only difference was the prices on their heads, and how easy it was to get ahold of one or the other.

In some instances, it was harder to locate the informant than the damn bounty. Where he’d been told to meet his in at the fence disguised as a bait shop, he’d been given a dirty look by the withering man at the counter and told to  _ “Check for any floatin’ bodies in the river.” _

Arthur pushes open the saloon’s double doors and scans the crowd. 

It’s the nervous twitching that he’d been told to look for, and right away his eyes catch on the heavy jerk of a balding head at the gambling table, the clinking of dice and half-empty bottles preceding the sound of boisterous cheering and sore losing. 

Arthur gives the man a tap on the shoulder, his thin body jerking dramatically. The man’s pinched face looks up to Arthur, and he postures with his chest puffed out. “W-what do you want, buster?” 

Arthur waves a hand in front of his face, sweeping the smell of tooth rot and alcohol from his nose. 

“You Cliff?” Arthur asks, eyeing the rest of the bar. Plenty of people meet his stare with a snarl of their own. It’s not that Arthur’s looking for a fight, but rather making sure he doesn’t recognize any faces in the crowd. It’s not his first time here, and his palms itch every minute he lingers.

Cliff’s head and shoulder twitch together. “Wh-why? W-who’s askin’?”

“I am. Heard you had something to sell.” 

The informant shrugs and turns back to the table. “I don’t got a c-clue what you’re talkin’ bout.”

Incensed at the dismissal and losing time, Arthur grabs the lanky man by his collar, dragging him away just as a pair of dice get tossed. Nobody looks twice, even as Arthur shoves the man into an empty table. “Jolean Mullins said you’d have a damn clue, so you’d best get to remembering.”

Only at the mention of Mullin’s name does the rat seem to come to his senses. Rather, he realizes a crowded gang bar isn’t the place he wants the bounty hunter’s name thrown around as one of his associations. 

“E-easy there, friend, eas-s-sy,” Cliff placates, attempting to steady himself on the rickety table. Arthur's frustration only grows the longer that dumb drunk expression twists up in confusion. Either he’s drunk himself stupid or Arthur’s been led to the wrong guy. Just as Arthur is about to let his frustrations out, the mosey little face in front of him shifts to realization. Arthur really hates seeing that face. He knows what that face means.

“W-wait, you ain’t after D-Dor--Dormin, are you?”

“I am,” Arthur grits. This line of conversation was treading down a familiar path. 

Cliff swears, smacking his gums. “I knew that lady ain’t look like no Arthur Morgan,” 

Arthur can't even muster the will to be surprised, but anger comes easily. He grabs Cliff by his collar again, shaking him sober. “That lady, she have a scar on her cheek? About this tall?”

Cliff nods his head as much as he can with Arthur jostling it. “Y-yep, she--she came in said she was Arthur Morgan and--and--”

“Well, where the hell did you send her?” he demands, dropping Cliff on his feet. The informant looks to the side, his small mouth pinched.

“A-a-are you gonna pay me, o-or--” 

All Arthur needs to do is raise a tightly balled fist for Cliff to curl in on himself pathetically. 

“There’s a train goin’ up to Rathskeller Fork! It’s the one that Dorman’s taken. It musta left by now, but that’s-that’s all I know--all she knows!”

Arthur doesn’t spare the room a second glance. Stomps bitterly down the creaking steps of the saloon and spurs his horse before he’s even got his foot in the stirrups. 

It’s not the face of his fresh bounty that sets his adrenaline pumping, fingers adjusting their position on the reins so he can pull tighter, thighs clenched so he can push faster. 

Despite himself, Arthur’s mouth forms a sour smirk as soggy dirt is replaced for flaxen dust. 

“That  _ goddamn _ woman.”

\--

Arthur rides hard, hard enough that he himself is panting with a worked up sweat by the time he gets sight of the stolen train. His horse grunts and snorts with each patch of desert dust she kicks up under him, her light hair glossy with perspiration. The cheeky jerks at her bit warn that she won’t put up with him for much longer, but she doesn’t have to. 

The closer he rides the clearer everything becomes. The tracks he’s been following begin to vibrate, and then shake with such vigor Arthur gets flashbacks to his time in California: of the unexpected pulsing underfoot that was later explained as an  _ earthquake. _ The only thing that shook more than the ground that day was him, trembling with trepidation and unnerve because since when did the earth goddamn _ shake? _

Where the scent of coal was easily picked up a near mile back, Arthur can now smell something else cloying the air. Sulphur and iron; gunpowder and blood. The hot desert air will carry that stench all the way back to Tumbleweed, and Arthur will carry it on his clothes for weeks. When he burns the tip of his barrel he’ll be stuck with it deep in his pores. 

As he rides past a bend of desert peak he can see the hijacked train just ahead of him, and with it, a spattering of what he knows is the Dormin Gang.

Rather, what is left of them. They’re strewn on the side of the tracks, vultures already picking and cawing as he bolts past. Bread crumbs for what lies ahead, and he knows who left them behind.

Crouched behind a wooden shipping crate stacked on the train’s middle flatcar, Arthur can make out a familiar dark iron revolver firing with deadly accuracy, and men’s pants that weren’t made to be filled the sinful way they currently are. 

Francis  _ fucking _ Hellsmith.

It doesn’t take long for her—or the people she’s shooting at—to take notice of the new arrival. Her head and gun turn at the same time, but unlike the men opposite of her, she doesn't fire a shot when she makes him out. 

She  _ waves at him _ , her smile particularly smug and toothy for someone in the middle of a gunfight--for a someone in the middle of poaching his damn bounty. 

If hitting women weren’t the one thing Arthur Morgan was above…

It’s no easy feat to get himself close to the train, not with a fed up horse and an onslaught of bullets now targeting him, but as the tracks curve around a formation he’s shielded long enough to steady himself on top of his moving saddle, knees shaking underneath him until the moment he jumps. 

Arthur’s done plenty of dangerous, stupid, foolish things in the years he’s spent mostly alive. Paid and been paid the rightful price plenty of times. But never have so many dangerous, stupid, downright  _ foolish _ opportunities presented themselves in such direct succession as the months following his introduction to the same woman who grabs his hand, helping him up from where he lands on the flat cart.

Arthur scrambles under cover just in time to miss a bullet. Over the whipping wind and his thin breath he shouts, “I should throw you off this damn train myself!” 

Francis flashes her shining, intact teeth at him. “Always a pleasure to see you, Mr. Morgan!”

He snorts, popping up the same time as Francis to fire his drawn colt, powder and smoke flying over their shoulders like the bullets poorly aimed at them. Francis empties before Arthur does, the hollow casings clicking together like wind chimes when they’re dumped at their feet. Six adroit jerks of the thumb push fresh bullets into her revolver, and she’s back up before Arthur can go back down. 

“You know,” she starts as the gunfire forces them to withdraw. “I thought you’d be happy to see me. This is a whole lot more men than what that bastard at the fence said there would be!”

Arthur doesn’t mention that he didn’t even ask the informant how many men to expect, or that by the time he’d gotten there he’d already been soused on his feet. Grumbles instead, “I don’t think your damn ears work, because you sure as hell weren’t meant to be a part of that conversation.”

“Don’t be like that, Morgan, we work better as a team,” she says through a smile. 

“We  _ ain’t  _ a team,” Arthur argues, but Francis is back up and firing. He can only hear one type of gun going off when she comes back down, and as two shots blast past them, Arthur logs them subconsciously.

“Well, consider my taking out half his damn gang as an apology!”

_ Three, four. _

“I’m  _ considerin’ _ this attempted theft, you harpy.” 

_ Five…  _

“I’m an opportunist! And maybe if you’d stop leaving your bounty warrants out while you slept--”

_ Six! _

Arthur’s revolver is up and firing the moment the final fumbling gang member tries to reload. He empties his revolver with blinding accuracy, the lackey falling off the side of the train just as a familiar hat is seen peeking out of cover. The rattlesnake skull hanging at the edge of a worn fedora is the target at the end of Arthur’s sights. 

Arthur is just about to fire his shot when a hand pulls on his coat. 

“Don’t kill him!” Francis shouts, “He’s wanted alive!”

“ _ Dead _ or alive,” Arthur corrects, sinking down to avoid the wood and lead flying over their heads.

Francis pulls the length of rope attached to her belt through her hands, coiling it around her elbow. With sweat and gunpowder smeared over her cheek, she dares to look almost casual—like whizzing bullets are just buzzing mosquitoes, their only symptom an itchy arm. 

“They really want to hang him in Blackwater, not just Tumbleweed,” she explains. “Sheriff raised his bounty to a full one-hundred to get him there breathing.” 

Arthur snorts derisively. He’s been in enough sheriffs’ offices with the woman to know that that deal wasn’t offered, nor was it easily accepted on the other party’s half. He wants to make a rude comment, but a piece of splintered wood scratches his cheek. He doesn't have time to keep pace with her. 

“You’re just gonna go and lasso him? Tackle him and tie him up?”

“Something like that.”

Arthur’s groan rips through his throat. “Your skull get thicker since the last time I saw you?”

“Let's hope so,” she grunts before ducking out from the crates, making a run for the next makeshift cover. 

Arthur’s stomach is an iron weight, forced nearly prone on the violently jerking cart to avoid the gunfire aimed blindly at him or Francis. His ears are perked for the sound of a bullet landing, a body crashing, but the next four shots whizz by without reaching any intentional targets. 

He’s about to peek his head up when a boom much louder than a revolver rings through the air. 

A shotgun blast, followed by an unmistakable high scream. 

Without a second to take a breath, Arthur is jumping over the crates, revolver drawn and ready to be shot, but the only body he can get a clear aim of is Francis’. 

She’s still standing, which is only a brief relief. Her feet slip clumsily against the deck, Dorman overpowering her in the struggle to wrestle a shotgun from his hands. The bastard takes every opportunity to punch and kick and slam her into the railcar, but she holds her own, delivering as many right hits as she takes—but god, she  _ takes.  _

Arthur’s blood boils with something mightier than adrenaline, and he doesn’t give a damn about the difference of 40 fucking dollars when another punch cracks right against her jaw. 

“Let me get a shot!” Arthur shouts, squinting down the barrel of his gun. Instead of making an effort to move out of the way, Francis seems to deliberately put herself  _ between _ Arthur’s gun and Dormin’s big head. 

Arthur shouts her name with a string of curses, but before he can even finish his sentence—

The shotgun goes off again. 

And Francis’ back hits the flat cart, her head bouncing off the rattling floor boards. 

There’s not a second to think, not a moment to lose. Arthur isn’t even sure he’s the one moving his own body, can only be witness to the jerk of his gun going off in his hand. There’s a spray of residue and a blast of heat that registers only faintly. The man doesn’t even count his shots, still clicking his trigger up until Dormin’s body drops over the side of the train. 

Like a rock thrown into water, he comes to himself with a shaking ripple. 

Arthur's eyes immediately shoot to the body still lying prone on the cart. He takes three trembling steps forward before Francis slowly pulls herself up to her elbows. 

Her head turns to him slowly, her skin blanched of its normal color, eyes wide. 

But fully intact.

It takes them both several heartbeats to believe that fact, the stillness that settles inside of them demanding their reverence. 

And then, the moment is gone. 

_ “Just what the hell was that!”  _ Arthur roars, stomping forward and grabbing her arm. He rips her off of the ground, and she tumbles into his chest, limp with shock. 

“I-I didn’t see the shotgun,” she pants as Arthur inspects the raw of her palms, burnt from pushing the barrel away as it went off. That’s where she screamed. Not because she was shot, but because she’d been seconds away from it. 

Francis pulls her trembling hands from his grasp—how long had he been holding them?—and mops the sweat and blood from her brow. 

“We need to--to stop this thing,” she mutters—nearly slurs—before turning to jog through the train carts. 

Arthur stares after her, his brow furrowed and the smell of blood and gun smoke burning his nose.

Only when the screeching brakes jerk him forward on the train does he snap out of his haze and whistle for his horse. 

—

Dorman lies dead as a rock when they finally find his body. His fancy suit is covered in flaxen dust, the famous rattlesnake hat nowhere to be seen. Arthur counts five holes burned into the now wrinkled linen, though he could have sworn he only had four shots left in rotation. 

Francis kicks his limp foot petulantly. “Guess we’re splitting sixty.”

Arthur hasn’t caught his breath enough to argue with her. Not when she helps him tie the bounty to his mare’s flank, or when she chats up the sheriff in Armadillo (“Blackwater’s too far to travel with a body, and Palmer’s fair enough,” she’d said). She lamented to the sheriff that they couldn’t bring him in alive, and managed to get them 40 dollars each, despite the fact. Arthur stood silent all the while, until the money split and, finally, so could they. 

Though not for long. Never for too long, it seemed. 

He knows she’s entered the saloon far before he sees her. Sonny’s falls quiet, the rhythmic creak and thud of heeled boots the only accompaniment to the clumsy piano keys. And even they fall silent, letting the twelve steps it takes to slide up next to him at the bar sing her siren’s call.

She’s a few inches too close for them to seem passive acquaintances, and yet Arthur sees the propositioning gaze of several too-drunk patrons land on her. 

Her left hand is tied in a way that looks more akin to a boxer’s wrap than something medical. Arthur doesn’t say anything still, but the way he’s looking at her bandage must speak loud enough. When she catches his line of sight she pretends to search for something in the pocket of her jacket and keeps her hand there. 

“You gonna buy a lady a drink? Staring has to cost something.” 

Arthur snorts and shakes his head, but shells out the two dimes anyway. The shiny coins are quickly replaced with lukewarm alcohol. 

“You’re not still mad, are you?” she purrs, swishing the liquid languidly in her glass. 

“Won’t you just shut up?” Arthur half heartedly snaps. All it serves is to make Francis press her tongue to her cheek.

“I had it under control,” she mutters into her glass. “With Dormin, I had it under control.”

The vestigial embers of anger that had only been tempered by adrenaline begin to smoulder once more. Arthur’s grip tightens on his glass. The burn of alcohol doesn’t help him cool down. He knows only two things that will.

“I had a plan, you know. Follow the train to where it was goin’, grab him at his stop.  _ Covertly _ . Not rush in with my guns hot.” He swallows the rest of his glass in one gulp, letting it burn the whole way down. He hisses through the sting.

“Grab him where the rest of his lackeys were?” She scoffs. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but you’re not the first person I’d go to for finesse.”

Arthur snaps, turning his body to face her fully. “I didn’t ask you on this job, I didn’t  _ want _ you on this job. You shoved your nose somewhere it didn’t belong— _ again— _ and nearly got yourself killed. And for what? Half a bounty? Stroking your self righteous ego?”

Arthur knows he’s spoken a bit too loud, but can’t find himself to care about anything other than the way Francis’ jaw is set. “How much did you even know about Dormin?” she says through her teeth. “Do you have any idea how big his gang really is? That those men on the train were just his first line of guns?”

Arthur didn’t know, and his silence speaks for him. He’d be bothered by that if Francis’ own unspoken words weren’t plainly written on her face.

“Why didn’t you wanna kill him?” Arthur finally asks.

She swallows her drink with her stare boring into his. “Sheriff offered me--”

“That ain’t why.”

When it’s clear she won’t budge any more on what she knows, Arthur sighs. “Some people ain’t worth the trouble taking back alive.” He taps the bar, another glass of alcohol set so far away he has to step to grab it. “I would have been taking back a dead body either way.”

“If you’d done it my way maybe you wouldn't have had to split the one-hundred.”

Her words bring bile to his throat, a slew of harsh words riding at the top, but they melt away when he looks back at her. 

Despite the frivolity in her tone, she continues to stare blankly down at her arm. Rather, a mosquito there, pierced through her sweat-slicked skin. She watches it drink from her silently, paralyzed under its needle.

A cord in the piano breaks just as Arthur brings his hand down onto Francis’ arm, popping the blood-gorged bug. 

Arthur swallows. His voice is nothing but gravel as he says, “I’d still be splitting it with the undertaker.”

Francis scrubs the crushed rust and black dirt off her arm, nails scratching over the smarting skin. “I don’t need a burial,” she says, unraveling herself from the bar with apathetic elegance. “But I did get a room.”

Arthur tries to think of one good reason not to follow her to the lodging upstairs, but the most he can do is order four more glasses of gin and bend the edges of a cigarette card he finds after finishing his pack.

There are two ways for him to cool down, and he’s had his fill of killing. 

**Author's Note:**

> i know not everything here makes complete sense, theres minor plot holes and a lot of background that's intentionally left vague, but i hope you enjoyed this first half regardless! I've worked on this story for ages, and despite trying to give up on it kept getting drawn back in. Second half will be up by the end of the week!  
> Any comments, questions, concerns are welcome <3


End file.
